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THE DIARY OF A CHICK WHO WALKED AWAY FROM ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS (THE CULT)

Go-Go Rach once was a girl whose world was controlled by the idea that she was POWERLESS. After a chain of events, she realized she'd been lied to. Now she does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with whomever she chooses to do it with.

Her blog chronicles the horrors she experienced in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous (THE CULT) and the wonderful things she does now that she's escaped. *IF SHE BIT HER TONGUE ANY LONGER, IT WOULD BLEED!*

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

"Matt Thomas" (a pseudonym) had only recently begun experimenting with marijuana when he got caught selling a few joints in the bathroom at his junior high school. It was no big deal, Thomas thought, especially considering that his parents — an investment banker and a homemaker — smoked pot too.

But Thomas' grades had already begun to slip, perhaps because of his increasing alcohol and marijuana use; that, coupled with his drug-dealing offense, was enough for the school to recommend that his parents place him in an inpatient drug-treatment program. Thomas, then 13, was sent to Parkview West, a residential rehab center located a few miles from his suburban Minneapolis home. (See pictures of teens in America.)

But rather than encouraging sobriety, Thomas says, his seven-week stint at Parkview West helped trigger a decades-long descent into severe addiction — from regular marijuana user to daily drinker to cocaine and methamphetamine addict. "It was [in rehab] that they told me that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic," says Thomas. "There was no turning back. The whole event solidified and created this notion in my own mind and in my social status. Who I was, was an alcoholic and drug addict."

In treatment, Thomas met other addicts. He attended daily group therapy with older teens, who regaled him with glamorized war stories about drugs he'd never tried. In rehab, says Thomas, one's first question upon meeting a new person is, "What's your drug of choice?" And that's often followed by, "What's that like?" Thomas recalls hearing a description of an LSD high so seductive that he pledged he would try it if he got the chance. He did, not long after getting out of rehab. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Great American Pot Smoke-Out.")

Increasingly, substance-abuse experts are finding that teen drug treatment may indeed be doing more harm than good. Many programs throw casual dabblers together with hard-core addicts and foster continuous group interaction. It tends to strengthen dysfunctional behavior by concentrating it, researchers say. "Just putting kids in group therapy actually promotes greater drug use," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The exposure can be especially dangerous for impressionable youngsters. "I've known kids who have gone into inpatient treatment and met other users. After treatment, they meet up with them and explore new drugs and become more seriously involved in drug use," says Tom Dishion, director of research at the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon, who has documented such peer influence in scientific studies.
In academic terms, the problem is known as deviancy training, or the negative impact of friends on teen behavior — what parents would simply call a bad influence.

In one 2000 study, in which researchers measured how much time teens spent together and how much they encouraged their peers' misbehavior, Dishion found that social exposure to delinquent peers at age 14 accounted for 53% of adolescents' life problems five years later — including criminal convictions, sexual promiscuity, relationship issues and drug use.

In another study looking specifically at the impact of group interventions, teenagers who had been identified as being at high risk for drug use and delinquency at ages 11 through 14 were more likely to smoke cigarettes and have disciplinary problems at school three years later if they had been enrolled in a teen focus group about drugs, compared with those who underwent private counseling sessions with their immediate families.

"Any condition that promotes kids talking about or endorsing drug use [with one another] would increase the likelihood that the treatment would have a negative effect," says Dishion.

My Tolstoy Has Gone To Heaven

COMMENTS POLICY

You people are ill equipped to contribute to any intelligent conversation on my site, as long as you subscribe to dogma and lies.

Your comments are trite and boring and do not belong here.

Also, I will not allow you to assault my readers with the filth and perversion you call "well."

Please Note: I did not ask for your advice, yet you keep coming back in your precious free time away from meetings as a way to indulge the feelings you used to drink or drug over.

I encourage you to get some authentic help with your issues so you may get to the bottom of why you've replaced your substance abuse with the incessant need to troll the internet for places to spew your insecurities and rage.

Why bother with such a waste of time?

Some are sicker than others.

I do not welcome, nor appreciate your obsession with me.

I put up with your insanity for much too long as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a right to protect myself from those of you who insist on doing it here.

Go-Go away now and get some help before you find yourself in jail, dead or in an institution.

With love and an epic internet hug.

I do hope you feel better soon.

Go-Go Rach

SOMEONE WHO HATES YOU NORMALLY DOES FOR ONE OF THREE REASONS. THEY EITHER SEE YOU AS A THREAT, THEY HATE THEMSELVES, OR THEY WANT TO BE *YOU!*

*SMOOCH*

Thanks for stopping by. I've got *MAD LOVE* FOR YA. XXX Go-Go Rach

Check Out What Tweeps are Saying About Go-Go Rach!

"Go-Go Rach is to writing, as Madonna is to music...ever-changing, brilliant, enviable energy...on the edge of my seat to see what she does next!*SHE ROCKS*" -anonymous review of LIVING THE DREAM WITH Go-Go Rach

"http://gogorach.com by @gogorach it's a must read & that's all there is to it. Go now...read Rach."@22DanielleM

@Drifter0658@hargarmoopy Drifter, thanks for posting this link.. Just spent an hour reading the best blog I've read all year.. No kidding! :)

BIG, FAT THANK YOUS! XOXO

HEADS UP, PEOPLE!

THIS IS THE DEAL.

THE SUBSTANCE IS *NOT* THE PROBLEM.

The *REAL* issue is whatever pain the abuser needs to kill.

The substance of choice works (until it doesn't).

If we take the pain out of the equation, substance abuse will disappear.

POWERLESSNESS is a billion dollar business that has spread across our hearts and minds like a venom.

The "disease concept" kills people, lives and families every single day.

Labels LIE.

Ask "WHY?"

It's your life.

How do you want to remember it?

Don't get "sober."

Get WELL.

Revolutionary Recovery, baby!

Go-Go Rach Says:

ONE SPOKE.THEN, ANOTHER SPOKE.WE ALL SPOKE.AND IT STOPPED.

CHANGE IS COMING.

*BUCKLE UP*

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Get Me

I am a grown woman with a foul mouth, sharp wit, and lots of stories to tell. I will never apologize for what I write, or how I write about what interests me.

Life is not all roses and butterflies; I am fascinated by the darker side of it and the fucked up shit people do to each other in the name of "love."

I find it incredibly humorous when people read my work (over and over), then bitch about it, as if I have, somehow, tricked them about my content.

Finally, this blog is not about healing for me. I've moved well beyond the need or expectation that I might heal from the way I've been betrayed.

There is no healing from the shit I've been through.

Instead, I choose to embrace and accept the pain as a vital and appreciated part of myself.

I am a writer. I write. It's what I do and will continue to do until I take my last breath.

Until that time I will always call to the carpet the injustices I see via stories about the perpetrators. If you don't like it, don't read it.

If we behaved better, I would have nothing to write about.

That's What's Up.

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” August Wilson

Go-Go Rach on Google +

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi